


S3- Future Fic

by thudworm



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2019 [20]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alt 2012 Avengers Timeline, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 19:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20476463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thudworm/pseuds/thudworm
Summary: It's becoming very clear to Tony that something strange is going on. Loki managed to escape with the tesseract, someone messed with the arc reactor, and Steve has some concerning information to share.Alt-2012 Avengers timeline fic.





	S3- Future Fic

**Author's Note:**

> So. Four days before the deadline for the Bingo I had about 1600 words done for this fill. Then I decided I wasn't happy with it, scrapped it, and started over. I'm definitely much happier with how it's turned out now, but please be gentle if parts of it seem a little rushed.

The first sign Tony had that something very strange was going on (aside from the whole wormhole and aliens thing) was when he investigated the arc reactor failing. As much as he played up the genius thing, he knew his tech wasn’t infallible; even the tech he relied on to keep himself alive sometimes didn’t work as intended, the palladium poisoning incident being one obvious example. 

His running theory had been that it was Loki’s fault. Even though the sceptre has failed at mind controlling him there was no telling what the magic (damn he hated magic) might have done to mess with his tech. But as he pulled the reactor apart to get a good look, that idea went out the window. 

There were some odd energy traces showing up as JARVIS scanned it, but that wasn’t the problem. There was no way it should have failed the way it did. It looked like someone or something had somehow disconnected a conduit to interfere with the flow of power, but only in a way that meant Thor was able to send enough power to circumvent it and kick start his heart back into a normal rhythm. Not that having the hammer used as a defibrillator was an experience he ever wanted to repeat. 

It was a very precise means of sabotage, and the fact that whoever had caused the failure hadn’t done it to try and kill him was very little comfort compared to the idea that someone was familiar enough with how the reactor worked to manage it.

Tony was pulled from his increasingly panicky thoughts when JARVIS announced Captain America’s arrival at the Tower. Which was when the second sign that something strange was going on happened. 

Tony had asked Cap to come around to the Tower when he had some free time in between helping with the cleanup of the city and rescuing kittens from trees, or whatever he was doing. Tony wanted to talk to him about the rest of the Avengers moving into the Tower together, since they were going to continue to work together to track down Loki. Bruce and Thor were already set up in temporary rooms for lack of anywhere else to stay, and that had to be better than the SHIELD barracks.

The work Tony had been doing on the arc reactor had pulled him into deep into the engineering zone. The kind where he forgot to eat or drink anything that wasn’t put in front of him by DUM-E. So JARVIS— that traitor— chose the moment Captain America (or should Tony now be thinking of him as Steve?) turned up in the workshop to nag him about food. 

“Captain Rogers is here to see you. And may I remind you, Sir, that it has been over ten hours since you last consumed anything more substantial than coffee. May I suggest that you discuss your business with the Captain upstairs, with food.” 

“Fine, you mother hen. JARVIS, show Cap upstairs and point him at the takeout menus. Cap, get whatever catches your eye. Just tell JARVIS and he’ll put the order in. I have something I want to finish off, but I’ll be there when the food arrives. JARVIS will make sure of it,” Tony said wryly. 

Cap seemed hesitant, but he nodded and headed back to the elevator. Once he was alone again, Tony turned his attention back to what he had discovered about the arc reactor’s failure.

There was only one conclusion Tony could draw- someone knew, very precisely, how it functioned and how to break it. Which should have been impossible. He had made damn sure that there were no details available anywhere after  Obie Stane had tried to steal it, but there was no other explanation. 

“JARVIS, time for some crazy theories. If we assume someone wanted to mess with the reactor, how would they know how?”

“It stands to reason that they either were able to make an educated guess based on other engineering knowledge, or the information was available to them somehow.”

“So it was either just a fluke they didn’t kill me, or we have a much bigger problem. Who could possibly know how the reactor works?”

“There was the incident last year with Ivan Vanko, Sir.”

Tony groaned. “Yep. And since Hammer was involved, the odds are good this is probably somehow his fault. I doubt he could do anything directly from prison, but if he had info from Vanko his shitty security system can’t have done much to keep anyone out.”

“Indeed. Shall I access Hammer Industries systems myself to investigate the possibility they possess relevant information; and, if so, whether they have experienced a security breach?”

“Go for it, JARVIS.” 

There was a moment of silence before JARVIS spoke again. “Sir, I would like also like to propose you running a full diagnostic check on my systems.”

“You think someone got in unnoticed and stole from us, not Hammer? Before today I would have said the idea of someone other than me being able to manage that was impossible; but that’s what I would have said about the reactor too.”

“Indeed. I find the prospect of someone interfering with myself quite concerning.”

“You and me both, buddy. Run the scans, and I’ll look over the data after lunch? Dinner?”

“It is approximately 6 pm, Sir. I believe the food Captain Rogers ordered is due to arrive within minutes.”

*

Tony headed upstairs, and entered the kitchen just in time to see Cap struggling to manage the mountain of food that had appeared. 

Cap was somewhat sheepish as he explained, “I ordered Thai food, if that’s okay? I’ve been eager to try it ever since overheard some agents at SHIELD talking about it, but I wasn’t sure what was what, so I got a bit of everything. JARVIS said there were a few things here you liked.”

They divvied up the food between them, and Tony explained each dish as Steve tried it. There was other small talk as they ate, and when Tony was finished with his meal Steve was still going strong. Apparently being a super soldier was hungry work. 

Tony was about to bring up the whole reason he’d asked Steve to come to the tower in the first place, when Steve spoke first. As blandly as though he was commenting on the weather, he said “Hail Hydra.”

After being thrown off of his own damn tower by Loki, Tony had made damn sure there weren’t going to be any more close calls like that again, which meant there was an Iron Man suit close by at all times. He summoned it with a flick of the wrist, and it took only seconds before he was suited up and pointing his repulsors at the fake Cap in front of him. 

“Who are you and what have you done with the real Steve Rogers,” Tony demanded. 

“Sorry, sorry. I just had to be sure, I don't know who I can trust.”

“Explain. Now.”

“What do you know about what happened immediately after Loki escaped with the tesseract that day?” Steve asked, instead of answering directly. 

“I was a bit busy having a heart attack at the time, but I read the report. He got his hands back on the glowstick of destiny, you fought him for it, but he managed to knock you out and get away.”

Steve nodded. “That’s what my report says, you’re right. But I didn't exactly include everything in my report.”

“Because you don’t know who to trust,” Tony surmised. 

“Yeah,” Steve said with a sigh. “There was something he said to me that really threw me. Which was obviously his goal for saying it, to get me to let go. But what I don’t get why he bothered. When I came to, the sceptre was right there in my hand. It… ‘spoke’ isn’t the right word, but I had an overwhelming sense that I shouldn’t let SHIELD have it. I don’t know why I believed it, but I did, so I hid it. WhichI’m glad of given what happened next.

“I’ve been staying at SHIELD since then, and a few people have been treating me differently. At first I thought it was just because of something Loki did while he was pretending to be me. Well, it is, actually. In the elevator, Rumlow shook my hand and whispered something in my ear. He said… ‘Hail Hydra.’ I was so shocked I didn’t, couldn’t, react until after he got off. ” Steve sounded almost desperate to be believed, and Tony couldn’t exactly blame him for that. 

It… it was a lot. On any other day Tony would have dismissed it, maybe as the negative effects of spending 70 years as a Capsicle, or as Steve having a wicked case of PTSD causing him to conjure enemies where there were none. But. It wasn’t like Tony wasn’t investigating some seemingly impossible possibilities himself.

“You’re right, it does sound crazy. But I believe you,” Tony said, and Steve slumped with visible relief. “So what’s the working theory here? Hydra are still around somehow, and they think you’re secretly one of them now?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Clint hasn’t exactly been eager to talk about what it was like, but he’s said a couple of things. Being under Loki’s control wasn’t just having no free will, there was no keeping secrets either,” Steve said.

“And if even just one of the agents he turned was also working for Hydra, he would have known everything, including that the sceptre was in their hands. So he pretends to be Hydra while pretending to be you.”

It all made sense. Except for the part where Loki didn’t actually take the sceptre after trying to steal it back. And the magnitude of the coincidence it would be if Steve’s story was completely independent of what had happened to Tony at the same time.

“Sir, I have the preliminary results of the searches available for you, but they are inconclusive. So far there is no evidence of either theory being correct,” JARVIS said. 

Tony swore loudly, which earned him A Look from Steve.

“How much do you know about this?” Tony asked, tapping on the arc reactor.

To Steve’s credit he rolled with Tony’s sudden non sequitur. “Only what your SHIELD file had to say. It powers the Iron Man armour, and it keeps you alive.”

“Those are the important points, yeah. Loki was able to escape with the tesseract because I dropped the case when something suddenly went wrong with it. Like you said, it keeps me alive, so I’m kinda motivated to make sure the problem doesn’t happen again. But when I started looking into it, I discovered it wasn’t an ordinary mechanical failure— it was sabotage.”

“But how could someone get close enough to damage it? Or would even know how?” Steve asked. 

“That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” Tony replied.

“SHIELD certainly made it seem like you were the only one currently capable of creating one.”

Only Tony… And someone they were assuming had been pretending to be Steve… 

“This is gonna sound crazy…” Tony said slowly, “but what if it was me? And it wasn’t Loki you fought, it was yourself.”

“You’re right, it does sound crazy.”

“Hear me out. Thor and Loki are apparently from another realm, however that works, and there are dozens of people who’ve made a career out of theories and speculation of a Multiverse. Hell, add time travel to the list.”

“Are any of those really a real possibility?” Steve was sceptical, which was reasonable. Tony could scarcely believe it, and he was one the one coming up with the suggestions. 

“I mean, I’d have to talk to Thor, see what he says about the other realms thing, and get Bruce to help with the science stuff, but yeah. Given everything else that’s happened lately, I don’t think it’s those are something we can dismiss out of hand.”

“Where are Bruce and Thor?” Steve asked. “I thought they were staying here with you.”

“Bruce is, but he’s also trying to track the tesseract again. He’s not having much luck. Running theory is that when Loki took his chance to escape he hightailed it to somewhere beyond our, well, Thor's reach. So even though it’s probably not on Earth anymore, Bruce is pulling such long hours trying that he passes out in the lab more often than he comes home.

“Thor has a place here when he wants it, but with nothing else to do at the moment he’s in Norway, visiting his girlfriend. Who happens to be the brilliant Dr Jane Foster, and I’m gonna get make sure he introduces me to her.”

“Any way I can help? I mean, I assume the answer is no, I’m about 70 years out of date with this stuff, but I’m not good at sitting idle,” Steve said with a self deprecating grin.

Tony thought for a moment. “Actually, there is one thing you can do for me.”

*

Speaking to Thor hadn’t yielded as much helpful information as Tony had hoped for. The Asgardian concept of Realms was of no use to figuring this out, and Thor had never heard of the multiverse being a thing, or time travel being possible, but that didn’t rule them out. 

So that’s where Tony was now focussing his efforts. Steve had retrieved the sceptre from wherever he had it stashed, and now JARVIS was running every test and scan he and Tony could possibly think of.

While JARVIS was doing his thing Tony was reading everything he could find about time travel and the multiverse, which was an exercise in frustration. 

“Sure, why don’t we just throw away everything about how the universe is supposed to work,” Tony muttered to himself rhetorically after reading one particularly bad paper. 

“It does appear, Sir, that the prospect of time travel does require violating several or the fundamental principles which underpin our current understanding of the universe. However, if anyone were capable of such a feat, I believe it would be you.” 

Tony was going to blush if JARVIS kept flattering him like that. “The question is, if there is time travel or dimension hopping going on, how the hell do we tell?”

“I suggest we wait until the results of these scans are available before we begin drawing conclusions without accurate data,” was the admittedly reasonable reply from JARVIS, which meant Tony had to settle for continuing to read various articles and papers and jotting down notes. 

“Sir, I believe I may have discovered something,” JARVIS said hours later, and Tony turned away from what he was reading to give his full attention to what JARVIS had found. 

“Show me,” he demanded. 

JARVIS brought up the results of the scans he had been conducting. In amongst the expected radiation and energy traces was an odd signature. It was like nothing Tony had ever seen before.

No. 

Wait.

Tony had been wrong a moment ago- he  _ had _ seen it before. Not just from the arc reactor, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on where else. 

“JARVIS, where have I seen that before?” Tony asked and pointed at the specific reading. “It’s not something I’ve worked with personally, but search through SI’s databases, see if there’s any similarities to old projects that never panned out. Start with the older stuff.”

“Searching.” 

Objectively, it didn’t take long for JARVIS to find a match, but to Tony it felt like an age. “I believe I have something, Sir. One of Howard Stark’s notebooks, as provided by SHIELD when working on a replacement for palladium, describes a unique type of particle, named Pym Particles after their creator.” JARVIS brought up a copy of the page. “The particles are supposedly capable of inducing a significant increase or decrease in the size of an object. The described radiation emitted by such particles is remarkably similar to the traces detected from within the arc reactor, as well as the sceptre, and several locations in close vicinity to the Tower.”

Changing size. The notes mentioned Pym planning a human trial of the particles, which could explain the how, if not the why, of the damage to the reactor. And, based on the rants his father had gone on whenever the name Pym was mentioned, it wasn’t going to be easy to learn more than he already knew. 

There was a huge difference between changing size and time travel, though. 

“It’s a start. Bring me some more recent information about how these things work.”

Several days later, and JARVIS hadn’t had much success; Pym was apparently secretive to the point of paranoia when it came to his work. Tony bracing himself for an attempt to contact Pym directly when JARVIS notified him he had an incoming call. 

So when answered the call to find Hank Pym has called him instead, Tony just about fell off his chair in surprise. He hadn't been expecting to make it past the secretary when he tried, and told Pym as much. 

“Yes, well. I noticed you searching for information regarding my particles. I would like to know why.”

What followed wasn’t exactly a friendly chat, but somehow Tony managed to convince Pym he was interested for a legitimate reason, and not trying to steal his work. Apparently carrying a nuke through a wormhole to defeat an alien army, and thus save the world, counted for something. Pym agreed to share his research notes and untested theories, and even to provide a small sample of the particles themselves. 

And all Pym wanted in return was full access to all of the data Tony obtained; in particular, anything to do with the ‘quantum realm’. It was a more than fair deal, and Tony was happy to oblige. Assuming he managed to have any success, that was. 

Tony had needed to convince Bruce that the search for Loki and the tesseract was a dead end before he could enlist his help with this new challenge, but it was a good thing he did because Bruce’s expertise with gamma radiation turned out to be vital when they eventually cracked the riddle. 

The quantum realm mentioned by Pym had been as good a place to start as any; and, after weeks of long hours and a few all-nighters in the lab, Tony and Bruce had a prototype ready to test. They still weren’t exactly sure whether it was a time travel thing or an alternate dimension thing, let alone how it worked, but it aligned with the data they had so it was time to move to the trial phase.

Much to JARVIS’s consternation, following lab safety protocols wasn’t really his thing (or Bruce’s for that matter, hence the Hulk), but even Tony wasn't willing to take a ‘fly before you can walk’ approach this time. 

They sent through test objects, starting with random items from around the lab, and when they were successfully retrieved without spontaneously combusting, they escalated to a probe based on the ones sent by NASA to explore the solar system, just smaller. 

The information they discovered from the probe suggested it was time travel they were chasing, not visitors from an alternate reality, which still left the question of why to be explained. Why would future versions of themselves come back in time, however many years, just to let Loki escape with the tesseract? Was it somehow related to the Hydra threat Steve had uncovered?

Answers they would hopefully find at the other end of the rainbow, so to speak. 

The live test run was also a success, the literal guinea pig was sent and retrieved with no problems.

The only hitch came when Steve caught on to Tony’s plan to send himself.

“You’re not doing this alone,” Steve insisted. “There’s no way of knowing who’s going to be waiting at the other end, or how they’ll react to your presence. It’s not safe.”

“Fine, Bruce can come too.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea, Tony. I know this is the sort of chance most scientists would kill for, but the Hulk is too unpredictable. How he’d react after being dosed with these Pym Particles is a mystery, let alone trying to time travel,” Bruce said. 

It was a hell of an argument that ensued, but in the end Tony managed to convince the other two that he was the best option. Steve was reluctant to concede, and only did so on the condition that Tony make the trip in the Iron Man armour, which Tony had been planning on doing anyway. 

As it turned out, being shrunk down to the subatomic level and being flung forward in time apparently didn’t agree with Tony. 

“JARVIS? Did it work?” Tony asked, trying to resist the urge to throw up in the suit. 

“It would appear so, Sir,” JARVIS replied, and Tony flipped open the faceplate to look around and see just what the future was like. 

**Author's Note:**

> What happens next?   
Who knows- certainly not the author…


End file.
